


of gods, or falling

by nereid



Category: Gossip Girl
Genre: Bulimia, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-29
Updated: 2015-09-29
Packaged: 2018-04-24 00:15:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4897786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nereid/pseuds/nereid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>jenny humphrey doesn't know yet what immortality is. she only knows what it tastes like.</p>
            </blockquote>





	of gods, or falling

 

 

 

it ends, well -- does anything really end, ever?

these days, she's not sure.

jenny humphrey is fourteen and she's lying on her bed in her fuzzy yellow worn out pijamas, propped up on her elbows, browsing through some pictures of girls from constance. she's going to be a freshman here soon, and a little research seems like a good move on her part.

there is one picture in particular that grabs her attention, it's from months ago, when serena van der woodsen was still on the upper east side and not mia. serena's in the picture, posing for whoever took the photo. she's eating ice cream and smiling and and her hair seems to shine more than jenny thought humanly possible until now. but even though it's serena's who catches jenny's attention, she's not what keeps it. on the photo, just behind serena (always just a little behind, jenny'll learn later) is a girl sitting on the stairs. she's not smiling, she's not eating ice cream. she's just looking at serena, an intriguing lack of expression on her face. the photo's caption says these two are best friends and that the brunette's name is blair waldorf.

after jenny turns off the laptop, she spends twenty minutes trying to emulate the coldness in the brunette's eyes.

jenny humphrey is fourteen (almost fifteen, really. if you ask about her age these days, she'll tell you she's almost fifteen.) and she's lying on her bed in her fuzzy yellow worn out pijamas and she thinks she could be a better blair waldorf than blair waldorf herself is. (it's this that'll obviously be her downfall. or her rise to victory. there's nothing in between on the upper east side.)

(jenny wouldn't want there to be, anyway.)

jenny humphrey is still fourteen when she blinks one day, pineapple yoghurt from her spoon dripping on blair waldorf's hair and that's when she realizes she's in the middle of a war with blair waldorf.

(always her full name, never just the prickly consonants of her first name, all or nothing, and blair _is_ , has always been _blair waldorf_ , either more or less than that would make her sound less royal, more human, and that might make jenny reconsider the carelessly cruelly intentional dropping of the yogurt on blair waldorf's carefully treated curls and she needs to be able to do this.)

(what she also doesn't realize or does realize and ignores, it's hard to tell, is that if blair waldorf can't be beat, _blair_ can.)

(jenny is stealing (for the first time) and she is caught (not for the last time) and when the police asks her name, _blair waldorf_ spills from her tongue, the name that creates gold, the name that destroys everything in its wake, and jenny is sure they will have to know she is lying - how would anyone believe her to be blair waldorf?)

(no one knows she's lying.)

(either that or it's the other way around, the timeless story of the hunter becoming the prey and the princess becoming the queen and the name rolls off her tongue even easier the next time she practices saying it in front of her mirror.)

jenny humphrey is still fourteen (wondering if she'll always be fourteen, if someone's placed a curse on her that she'll never escape, will always just have a room with a garage door in it, in a loft with stolen dresses and a sowing machine that never magically pricks her finger and lulls the kingdom into a magical dream, will always be just short of fifteen, just short of a queen, just short of immortality.)

jenny humphrey is still fourteen and sometimes she is blair waldorf, and sometimes she is serena van der woodsen, and she is all these people (royals, queens, goddesses) so much, she is sometimes not herself. she has dresses she hasn't sawn and people she hasn't had to blackmail into spending time with her and nate smiles at her without putting hands on her, unless when she asks him to; and creating things out of nothing, isn't that's what gods are for?

jenny humphrey is still fourteen, but she is immortal, and if you ask about her age these days, she'll smile and maybe it'll be magical and you'll go order her a martini without her having to as much as point her finger in the right direction.

jenny humphrey is immortal.

(jenny humphrey doesn't know yet what immortality is. she only knows what it tastes like.)

(blair knows all of it, the creaks and creases, the aftermath of a party, the deafening silence, the never ending cold.)

gossip girl, she helps. for fun, most likely. both of them (all of them) know blair (waldorf)'s not been brought down for good yet. but she's in the ground, mud and ashes, and it's jenny's time to be a phoenix now.

 

 

 

 

jenny humphrey is immortal when she finds blair (waldorf) in her bathroom on her knees, a sacrifice to aphrodite and to athens, and probably to the whole pantheon, a prayer, _please, let me be_.

the bathroom is beige and pink, and clean and sacred. blair flushes and brushes her teeth.

_what do you want, little j_

her voice is monotone, tired, like a useless routine act she has to go through.

jenny knows, because jenny knows the pains of speaking too much, too soon.

jenny pulls out her phone, a reflex, a habit, and stops, and considers.

this is it, the look behind the scenes. this is the aftermath of the party, when the (fallen) gods disgorge ambrosia after having consumed it, the landing that comes after the fall that comes after flying.

she doesn't want to be here.

 

 

 

 

jenny humphrey is fourteen. she'll tell you this if you ask her, maybe sometimes she'll stare at you if you're being weird or annoying, but if you seem alright, and kind, she'll probably be kind in return.

jenny humphrey is fourteen, and she only ever calls blair waldorf _blair_ , and she is always kind to her, because immortality is tiring, and it is not being alive, and jenny humphrey is fourteen and she knows goddesses need to shed their skins sometimes, and be alive, too.

 

 

 

 


End file.
